A mobile communication device and its serving base station wirelessly communicate to provide voice, Internet, email, text, video, and other applications. To conserve battery power, a mobile communication device may enter into a sleep mode or an idle mode when not actively receiving application data. In sleep mode, the mobile communication device conducts pre-negotiated periods of inactivity with the serving base station air interface. However, the mobile device remains registered with the serving base station, allowing the device to continue running active applications during sleep mode.
In idle mode, however, the mobile device does not remain registered with the serving base station and releases all network resources. By deregistering from the base station, idle mode removes the mobile device's active requirement to perform handover procedures between base stations. The mobile device becomes periodically available to receive downlink broadcast traffic messages without registration at a specific base station. If the idle mobile device detects pending traffic at the network, the device must again register with a base station to receive such data. This re-registration process can add significant delay in reconnecting the mobile device to the network prior to receiving the pending traffic.